Today we will leave Revelstoke and go to Canmore. On the way there we will visit Mt. Revelstoke. But first I made a photograph of the view from teh hotel :
You can see here, as I wrote yesterday, the rather busy road and the vew on the mountains (Mt. Begbie). Mt. Revelstoke is in the other direction. The entrance to the of the park is at N51.007743, W118.200810 (Meadows in the sky parkway). There is a booth there where you can buy a ticket for one day or a year pass. The latter is also valid in the other national parks in Canada. So that is what we did because we plan to visit more national parks. One ticket is CAN $8 per person. A family pass for all parks for one year is CAN $140. This means to break even we need to visit national parks 8 days. I am not sure we will manage this, but it does mean we do not need to stop to buy a ticket every time and the money goes to a good cause!
While driving to the parking area at the top of the mountain, you pass a number of viewing points. This is a photo from one of them (N51.008140, W118.187359):
We stopped at some of the other viewing points and finally paked at the parking area (N51.041030, W118.148681). Right next to the parking area there is a small lake formed by melted snow (Balsam Lake). This lake disappears later on in the year:
To get to the top you can take a small van, but you can also walk. It is something like 1 kilometer to walk (under a mile), so we did that. You do have to be careful because there are bears on the mountain. If you do come across one then the best thing to do is to stay close together and make a lot of noise. We did not see a bear but we did see some kind of marmot:
Once we got close to the top we see a small “fire watch” house. Not all the snow has melted yet on the path leading to the summit.
The view is stunning at the summit.
The “Fire watch” house on the summit (You can go inside and go upstairs):
After visiting the summit we set off down the path in the direction of Eva Lake and Miller Lake. This is a 6km (4 mile) and will take 4 to 6 hours both ways.
This is a path with really diverse surroundings There are also squirrels:
Part of the path:
View:
At one point we decided it was going to take too long to go all the way to the two lakes and decided to turn around. When we were almost back to the start we saw another marmot:
We then walked the “First footsteps”-trail. This is about 1 km long (0.6 miles). It will take you past a kind of mini glacier:
There is also “First nation” (indian) are visible:
We saw some more squirrels:
After that we had enough and went back to the car, but spotted a small bird that was posing for us:
Despite the warning we did not see any bears. Regardless, I found it a nice nice and quiet are to walk. Especially the path to Eve Lake was really nice. If I am ever in this area again im sure I will go back up. I can highly recommend this.
Once back in the car we started driving down the mountain towards Canmore where our next hotel is. When we were half way down the mountain a warning light of the engine of our car started to light up! So we stopped the car, turned the engine off and back on, but the light did not go off… The car did drive normally. Just to be sure i called the emergency on the car key. This was apparantly some kind of towing service. They were willing to come but the question was where they were going to tow us to as the AVIS office was already closed. Also we would have to pay for the towing cost… So I agreed with the guy that I would try the car again for a while then decide. After that I called AVIS, they were totally unable to help, they did give me the choice to just drive on or not. Finally decided to just continue as the car did drive rather normal. We did stop at the next gas station and filled up with highest octane number fuel, as we were afraid a bit that it was the flow octane fuel that we fueled up yesterday (there was nothign else available at the time). I could not find anything else in the car manual. On arrival at the hotel (Rocky mountain ski lodge N51.098019, W115.357402) the warning light was still on. So tomorrow we likely have to go visit AVIS to swap cars.
The hotel room was rather basic. The view from the back of the room:
If you zoom in on the photo you can see there is some “wildlife”:
